


Finding

by JustAnotherUnderstudy



Series: This Should Totally Be A Thing [35]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Inner Dialogue, OOM ship, Older Woman/Younger Man, Post-SPECTRE, Post-Skyfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 01:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17415980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherUnderstudy/pseuds/JustAnotherUnderstudy
Summary: Hey, you'll never guess what I did. I wrote a fix-it. :D





	Finding

**Author's Note:**

> Well, we certainly have been busy beavers here. Three stories in about 24 hours or so. I am a happy camper. Of course, school starts back tomorrow, and work, and all that other stuff with my kids and doctors and...well, we'll see what happens. :)

It wasn’t love at first sight, James thought. Or maybe it had been. It was difficult to recall the true circumstances that led him to realize he had fallen in love with her. He had started at the end, and worked his way back from there, trying to find that exact moment when he knew that there would be no other for him.

At first, he’d convinced himself he’d never known until she was breathing her last in his arms. Within days of that revelation, however, he realized that it might have been moments earlier, when she’d said, “I suppose it’s too late to make a run for it,” and he realized they should have done just that, and that he’d have never looked back if they had. Almost right away, though, he could think of a million small and, at the time, insignificant, moments when he could say now, with certainty, that in that instant, he fell into irrevocable love with her.

None of that mattered now, of course. She was gone. He could never tell her, never admit to her how important she was to him. He shut himself off even more from any sort of feeling. No matter how hard he tried, however, he could not shut off the feelings of loss and regret.

“Regret is unprofessional,” he could hear her complaining to him. And perhaps that is why he left the service to be with Madeleine. He had too much regret and it had made him too unprofessional.

James breathed deeply the warm, humid night air of the Bahamas and closed his eyes. He listened to the waves crash on the shore not far from the villa he was sharing with Madeleine. She was asleep in their bed, exhausted from their lovemaking. He’d been insatiable since they arrived and he wondered if, given her professional training, she was aware that he was using sex to kill the pain.

He didn’t tell Madeleine why he needed to visit the islands. He’d merely made it sound as if he wanted to take her away from the cold of the European winter. In reality, the cold reminded him of the night she died. He’d never particularly cared for the cold, but he’d been mostly indifferent about the need to tolerate it. Now, a chill in the air brought him only grief.

Finally, he could take no more of his contemplations. He looked at the half-empty bottle of whiskey and considered finishing it for the sake of sleep. Alcohol had never helped, though, so he instead stood and secured the door to make sure Madeleine slept safely and headed out onto the beach.

The first night he’d been here, James had considered the possibility that he was here because he’d given up living. He was numb, what difference would it make if he drank enough to make a viable attempt at drowning himself in the sea. _Her_ face, a scowl firmly planted on it, flashed through his mind. No, he couldn’t do that. He’d already left the service against her will, he couldn’t give up living as well.

It was a pleasant enough evening and there were quite a number of people walking along the shore or sitting on blankets and gazing at the stars. As lovers passed him, James began to feel more morose. This walk was doing nothing to clear his head of his thoughts and he turned to return to Madeleine.

Something made him stop. It was like a memory in the corner of his mind of something familiar, yet impossible. His mind was playing tricks on him, he thought. He would prove it by turning back around.

The scene that had caught his mind’s attention was still before him. A small, white-haired woman, wrapped in a woolen sweater, sat on a blanket and gazed out into the darkness over the water. He would know her silhouette anywhere. He had memorized it almost from the moment they met. There had been something about her, he recalled clearly now, something that demanded he notice her.

His feet began to move him before he thought better. His steps increasing in speed with each passing second until he was nearly running. It must have startled her because she looked up at him as he approached, that same fear on her face as had been there the night he returned to her in her flat so many years ago now.

James fell to his knees in the sand next to her then tentatively reached up a hand to touch her, to make sure she was real.

She leaned into his touch.

They stared at each other for what seemed like ages, neither knowing what to say, or how to move past this surreal moment.

Finally, James just said the first words that came to his mind.

“I want to kiss you so badly.”

Olivia looked surprised but slowly nodded.

When their lips met, James felt the fire all the way to his fingers and toes. He lay her back on the blanket and they proceeded to make out like they were reenacting that most famous scene from South Pacific.

“James?” Olivia gasped when he finally broke away for breath.

He smiled and tried to form words into a sentence but found he could not. So he just continued to look at her until her face softened into a smile as well, then he kissed her again.

Pulling her into his arms after several minutes of necking like a couple of horny teenagers, he finally realized the answer to the question that had plagued him since she’d “died” in his arms.

“I have loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

She hummed, as if she had known all along, and buried herself deeper in his embrace.


End file.
